A.A.A.R. – Alfresco dashlet and menu to analytics

One of the key features of the analytics is the easy access. For this reason it’s very important to have available an Alfresco dashlet and/or a menu item in the Alfresco header, where you can find all the links to the dashboards, reports and analytics. This feature is available using an easy module you can install and configure directly into your Alfresco installation. Below an example of the menu you get with the default installation.

The A.A.A.R. Alfresco addon is tested on Alfresco 4.2.x and 5.x versions. The solution is mainly based on the new Aikau framework and the traditional Surf framework, so every version compatible with both will be ok for this solution. Below a video showing the interaction and the user experience.

To install the A.A.A.R. Alfresco addon you have simply to install a so called AMP package. Below the step by step instruction to reach that goal.

1. Download and install the A.A.A.R. Alfresco addon

Alfresco addon to A.A.A.R. is released as an AMP package, easy to install and customize. You can download the AAAR-Alfresco-...-Share-vX.X.amp from SourceForge at the link below.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/aaar/files/

Of course, choose the right distribution depending on your Alfresco version. Once the amp file is downloaded, copy it into the <alfresco>/tomcat/amps_share folder of your Alfresco installation.

2. Apply the A.A.A.R. addon AMP file

Now it’s time to open a terminal and stop Alfresco from the installation folder, with the command below.

./alfresco.sh stop

Please note that the commands described are for Linux based operating system but nothing changed (extensions apart) for the Windows based operating systems. To apply the AMP file to your installation, simply execute the command below.

cd bin
./apply_amps.sh

The system will requires to you to press the enter for few times… no worry! 😉

3. Configure the A.A.A.R. addon

You are very close to your goal. The addon comes with two main features inside: the A.A.A.R. Dashlet and the A.A.A.R. Menu.

The A.A.A.R. Dashlet can be used in the main dashboard and into the various sites you would define. To activate the A.A.A.R. Dashlet, simply add it in the configuration feature you can find in Alfresco. Below a picture of it.

Once the dashlet is available into your dashboard, the last task is to configure the access to the analytics (and the list of available analytics itself). To do it, simply modify the AAAR.get.config.xml file you can find in the path described below.

<alfresco>/tomcat/webapps/share/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/web-extension/site-webscripts/com/fcorti/AAAR/components/dashlet/AAAR.get.config.xml

Attention: Please remember that by default the A.A.A.R. Dashlet comes with all the links with a relative path similar to /api/... To customize the links, you can modify directly the AAAR.get.config.xml content or specify the default pentaho server into the alfresco-global.properties (preferred). Below an example of settings.

aaar.pentaho.protocol=http
aaar.pentaho.host=localhost
aaar.pentaho.port=8082
aaar.pentaho.context=pentaho
aaar.pentaho.user=suzy
aaar.pentaho.password=password
aaar.pentaho.application=aaar

The A.A.A.R. Dashlet supports the “transparent authentication” between Alfresco and Pentaho, thank to the use of the Pentaho Transaprent Authentication plugin. Bundled, the plugin is defined to guarantee the transparent authentication only for the admin user. To understand how to configure it for the other users, please refer to the official documentation.

The A.A.A.R. Dashlet supports the multi-language descriptions of all the labels. To customize the labels and the descriptions of the analytics, simply modify the AAAR.get.properties file you can find in the path described below.

<alfresco>/tomcat/webapps/share/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/web-extension/site-webscripts/com/fcorti/AAAR/components/dashlet/AAAR.get.properties

The A.A.A.R. Menu feature comes deactivated by default. To activate the A.A.A.R. Menu you have to customize the share-config-custom.xml file adding the configuration below (you can find it also here).

<alfresco-config>

 ...

 <!-- A.A.A.R. config section -->
 <config evaluator="string-compare" condition="AAAR" replace="true">

 <!-- Set to true or false to view the menu and/or credits. -->
 <visible>true</visible>
 <visible-credits>true</visible-credits>

 <!-- Link set of the dashboards. -->
 <dashboards>
  <link label-id="AAAR_Menu.dashboard.main" icon-class="" target-url="/api/repos/%3Apublic%3AAAAR%3Amain.wcdf/generatedContent" />
  <link label-id="AAAR_Menu.dashboard.audit" icon-class="" target-url="/api/repos/%3Apublic%3AAAAR%3Aaudit_actions.wcdf/generatedContent" />
  <link label-id="AAAR_Menu.dashboard.repository" icon-class="" target-url="/api/repos/%3Apublic%3AAAAR%3Arepository.wcdf/generatedContent" />
  <link label-id="AAAR_Menu.dashboard.documents" icon-class="" target-url="/api/repos/%3Apublic%3AAAAR%3Arepository_documents.wcdf/generatedContent" />
  <link label-id="AAAR_Menu.dashboard.folders" icon-class="" target-url="/api/repos/%3Apublic%3AAAAR%3Arepository_folders.wcdf/generatedContent" />
 </dashboards>

 <!-- Link set of the reports. -->
 <reports>
  <link label-id="AAAR_Menu.report.one" icon-class="" target-url="/api/repos/:public:AAAR:Reports:audit_topTen.prpt/viewer" />
  <link label-id="AAAR_Menu.report.two" icon-class="" target-url="/api/repos/:public:AAAR:Reports:document_hours_of_activity.prpt/viewer" />
  <link label-id="AAAR_Menu.report.three" icon-class="" target-url="/api/repos/:public:AAAR:Reports:site_documents.prpt/viewer" />
  <link label-id="AAAR_Menu.report.four" icon-class="" target-url="/api/repos/:public:AAAR:Reports:document_mime_types.prpt/viewer" />
  <link label-id="AAAR_Menu.report.main-list" icon-class="" target-url="/api/repos/%3Apublic%3AAAAR%3Amain.wcdf/generatedContent" />
 </reports>

 <!-- Link set of the free-analysis. -->
 <free-analysis>
  <link label-id="AAAR_Menu.free-analysis.one" icon-class="" target-url="/content/saiku-ui/index.html?biplugin5=true&amp;dimension_prefetch=false#query/open/%3Apublic%3AAAAR%3AOlap%3AAudit_SaikuFreeAnalysis.saiku" />
  <link label-id="AAAR_Menu.free-analysis.two" icon-class="" target-url="/api/repos/%3Apublic%3AAAAR%3AOlap%3AAudit_Pivot4jFreeAnalysis.pivot4j/generatedContent" />
  <link label-id="AAAR_Menu.free-analysis.three" icon-class="" target-url="/content/saiku-ui/index.html?biplugin5=true&amp;dimension_prefetch=false#query/open/%3Apublic%3AAAAR%3AOlap%3ARepository_SaikuFreeAnalysis.saiku" />
  <link label-id="AAAR_Menu.free-analysis.four" icon-class="" target-url="/api/repos/%3Apublic%3AAAAR%3AOlap%3ARepository_Pivot4jFreeAnalysis.pivot4j/generatedContent" />
 </free-analysis>

 <!-- Link set of the credits. -->
 <credits>
 <link label-id="AAAR_Menu.credits" icon-class="" target-url="http://fcorti.com/alfresco-audit-analysis-reporting/" />
 </credits>
 </config>

 ...

</alfresco-config>

Attention: Please remember to replace http://localhost:8180/ with the right host and port of your Pentaho installation.

Ok, now start again Alfresco and the A.A.A.R. Menu item will be shown into your Alfresco.

4. Tips and tricks (optional)

About A.A.A.R. Dashlet:

Tip n.1: You can remove or add new <link> tags to customize the menu for your specific needs. For example linking your custom reports or dashboards.

Tip n.2: Evaluate the permits attribute to control witch users/groups will be able to view the analytic link in the dashlet. The group Everyone (the default value) means that the analytics will be available for every user in the dashlet with no restrictions.

Tip n.3: Evaluating the icon attribute with the Alfresco’s icon classes you will add one icon to your menu item. 😉

About A.A.A.R. Menu:

Tip n.1: Feel free to set to false the <visible-credits> tag to hide the credits link into the menu.

Tip n.2: You can remove or add new <link> tags to customize the menu for your specific needs. For example linking your custom reports or dashboards.

Tip n.3: Evaluating the icon-class attribute with the Alfresco’s icon classes you will add one icon to your menu item. Try adding alf-mytasks-icon to reports or alf-myworkflows-icon to dashboards. 😉

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